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You won’t find many games of footy more exciting and more memorable than last night’s Friday thriller. Check out our talking points from the match.
Ding dong, the Hawks are dead
Can you believe it? While I’ve had my doubts about Hawthorn regularly in the second half of the year I was never willing to write them off until they were confirmedly out of it. And now that time is here.
No Hawthorn in the grand final. No brown and gold confetti this year. Sorry Hawks fans, but everyone else who follows the game is loving hearing those words.
They’ve been arguably the best team we’ve ever seen over the last few years, and for what it’s worth, I reckon if they had Jarryd Roughead this year they’d have made it four in a row.
It was not to be. You’ll just have to content yourself with three straight flags, Hawthorn.
Can the Dogs win it all?
So with the reigning three-time champs out of the running, who are the favourites now? You’d have to at least consider the team who knocked them out as a strong contender.
This is a side who just two week ago we thought would be belted out of the competition in week one of finals. But their efforts so far have been simply incredible and if they keep them up they could win the most remarkable premiership in the history of the AFL.
We go together like Liam Picken and finals footy
Sometimes finals just brings incredible performances out of the league’s more anonymous players – Nick Davis, Nick Davis, Leo Barry you star! – and while there’s no doubting Liam Picken has always been a good contributor, he is playing out of his skin right now.
The bloke has kicked five goals in the past two weeks, three of them last night. To put that in context, he kicked just seven during the entire home-and-away season.
If Bonti’s not the best, he’s close
I’ve often said in the past that Marcus Bontempelli will some day be the best player in the AFL, and after last night’s game I’m wondering if that time might already have arrived.
Patrick Dangerfield is probably still deserving of that number one spot but I’d find it hard to say the Bont is not top two.
While he arguably didn’t have as strong a home-and-away season as say Rory Sloane or Dustin Martin, the way he has lifted in finals, especially for a young player, is simply incredible.
Regardless of where you rank him right now, there can be no doubt we are watching the birth of a legend.
Maybe the Hawks should ‘give a toss’ about contested possession
Alastair Clarkson’s comments from earlier in the season are going to come back to haunt him this week – he claimed earlier in the year that the Hawks don’t ‘give a toss’ about contested possession.
They lost that count 161-111 last night, a -50 differential. Oh, and they got drummed out of finals. While contested ball has never been the bedrock of the Hawks’ game, they can’t deny it has become a problem.
The Swans missed a good one in Josh Dunkley
The Sydney Swans looked set to reap two excellent talents from last year’s draft in Callum Mills through their academy and Josh Dunkley as a father-son – Mills is a Rising Star winner now for the Swans, but Dunkley is a Bulldog.
How did it happen? The young man did ultimately nominate to be picked up by the Swans but they passed on the chance to match the Bulldogs’ bid for him on draft night.
Maybe they just didn’t think he was good enough to be worth paying the price. Maybe, as some have speculated, they had agreed to let him go to a Victorian club if one bid, and were only ever going to match the bid if it came from interstate.
Regardless of the reasons for why it didn’t happen, the Swans fans and list managers must be kicking themselves for not getting it done now. He’s got huge talent.
Clay Smith might be the year’s best story
This has been a year full of great footy stories, and Clay Smith’s is one of the best – after multiple ACL injuries, to see him not just playing footy again, but putting in big performances on the finals stage, is as good as it gets.
From hero to zero – the Luke Hodge story
At the end of 2014, Luke Hodge was one of footy’s most respected players – he had just finished leading the Hawks to back-to-back flags and we all loved his cheeky but hard-edged style of play.
Flash forward to last night and the public perception of Hodge has changed, a lot. Playing close to the line is what has made Hodge and the Hawks great, but he and they have probably crossed the line a bit too often over the past two years – and the drink-driving incident, for which he was given just a slap on the wrist, doesn’t help either.
To be entirely fair, there’s a sprinkle of tall poppy syndrome in there too.
Is there a more likeable footballer than Luke Hodge? Yes, about 800 of them
— Josh Elliott (@JoshElliott_29) September 16, 2016
A Giants vs Bulldogs prelim promises plenty
Callan Ward and Ryan Griffen on the side of the Giants. Tom Boyd on the side of the Bulldogs. A team that hasn’t made the grand final in more than 50 years, up against a team who has never made one. And they’re arguably the two most promising young teams in the land.
One of them will make it through, and it will be the biggest story of the year. The other will suffer a crushing defeat. Either way, it’s going to be an epic.
Hawthorn will return
Much like James Bond, Hawthorn always crop up again, in new places and maybe looking a bit different, but Hawthorn all the same.
The additions of Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell over the off-season – assuming they do come to pass – will refresh this team and go a long way towards solving that contested possession concern. Tyrone Vickery is a bit less promising but might fill some of the gap left by Roughead.
They may still enter 2017 as premiership favourites.